7-Eleven formally announces opening stores in Okinawa

Kazuki Furuya, the president of 7-Eleven Japan, had a press conference in Naha to make a formal announcement on opening the chain’s first stores in Okinawa. The first stores will open in 2018, and the aim is to have about 300 stores throughout the prefecture.

Okinawa has been the only prefecture in Japan without 7-Eleven stores. The chain had a total of 19,579 stores in Japan, as of the end of May 2017. However, according to a source knowledgeable about the company’s plans, it’s possible that the opening of the first 7-Eleven stores in the prefecture could be postponed to 2019.

Currently, there are a total of 531 convenience stores in Okinawa, of which Okinawa FamilyMart has 319 and Lawson Okinawa 212. If 7-Eleven opens all of its 300 stores here, the total number of convenience stores in the prefecture would increase sharply 1.5-fold from now.

7-Eleven business model expands the number of customers by focusing on a wide variety of its private brand items and also selling the same products as supermarkets. Accordingly, analysts see it inevitable that the entry of the 7-Eleven would affect the whole local retail industry.

7-Eleven has its own “Dominant Strategy” – it opens a large number of branches in a specific area within a short period of time improving the efficiency of its logistics. It also helps to improve the awareness of the public.

In Febsuary 2017, rhe 7-Eleven Japan had total operating revenue of ¥833.743 billion, generating the ordinary profit of ¥251.265 billion yen. It’s total sales, simply totaling the sales of all of its franchise stores and the company-owned stores was ¥4.515605 trillion.